Garth Davis
Science fiction is a lot harder than it looks. On one end, the writers and…
Asher Luberto spoke with Mary Magdalene director Garth Davis about the film’s timeliness, influences, and the honest-to-God miracles that took place on set.
![Were you familiar with Mary Magdalene before you read the script? Garth Davis: Not in a deep, detailed way, but in the movies I have seen before and in the way everyone kind of understands. When I read this it was a completely different version, so that got me curious. I started to investigate it in a deeper way and found it astonishing it has taken us so long to put that story out there in a more popular light. Extraordinary really. It was definitely different than the story I grew up reading in the bible. I remember when the Passion of the Christ came out, an actor got struck by lightening during shooting. Anything like that happen on set for you? Garth Davis: There were a couple of pretty amazing moments. When we were shooting the scene of the exorcism, where the family was exorcising Mary in the Sea of Galilee, just before we were about to walk into the water the wind just completely stopped. Completely still, almost on cue, right? Then suddenly lightening appeared all over the ocean. It was unbelievable! So much so, that when shooting the scene I had to paint it out. It just felt like a trope, you know? People would have thought it was a visual effect. [laughs] Wow!Garth Davis: The other one was during a scene on the beach of Magdala. I did a drawing of the location and I wanted to add some smoke in the background. So we went down to the Recee, and as I was standing there, smoke emerged exactly where I was drawing it (laughs). It was one of those moments where you have to ask if something was guiding us in some way.](https://www.filminquiry.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/MV5BNDc5ODE4OTQxNl5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTgwODEzOTcyNDM_V1_SY1000_CR0014991000_AL_.jpg)
Garth Davis proves once again his skills behind the camera can help uplift middlebrow material, but only to a certain extent, Mary Magdalene significantly undercut by the increased familiarity and conventional storytelling.
Mary Magdalene tells the story of the life of the biblical figure Mary Magdalene – played by Rooney Mara. Since it will be distributed by the Weinstein Company, it will be interesting to see if it survives the controversy surrounding the company.
Lion will likely be overlooked at this year’s Oscars; with its inspiring heart-wrenching true story, though, it is still worth watching.
Though its feel-good sentiments are hard to resist, there are simply too many tonal and structural issues that hold LION back from greatness.
Another day of school on Wednesday (September 14th) allowed me to take a break from my TIFFing, which was welcome. However, I was back on the town the next day, my sixth of what would be nine days in total. After the first weekend, TIFF starts to wind down:
Welcome to every parent’s nightmare: your kid isn’t just lost in a store but has been whisked away by a train, putting so much distance between you that it’s impossible to reconnect. What would you think after decades of not seeing your child?